AH: Today on the podcast, I’m joined by Katrina Damigos, head of teacher training and course leader for the Musicians of Change PGCEI at Music Masters. The course trains musicians to teach whole class or large group instrumental and vocal lessons in any setting. And why I thought you’d be interested is that the thread that runs through it is musicians creating change in their own communities with a central pillar of inclusion. So welcome, Katrina. It’s really great to have you here.
KD: Thank you so much. I’m such a fan of your podcast.
AH: Oh, really lovely to hear. Thank you. So back in January 2021, I talked with your CEO Ros Deville mainly about your equity, diversity, and inclusion programme – I’m in – but we also touched on your PGCEI briefly. So I’m really interested to delve deeply into the PGCEI because we didn’t have enough chance to talk about it with Roz. But before we get to that, can you tell me briefly how did you end up where you are today, and why is it so important to you personally?
KD: Yeah, of course. I trained as a classical violinist and singer, coming up through the sort of specialist music school conservatoire route and everything. But then I went and specialised for my masters in ethnic musicology, actually, and it was here that I developed a real sort of fascination and kind of passion for looking at the way music’s role in society kind of brings communities together, and I think I felt really, I felt just really excited by that idea. It was not how I’d experienced music growing up. I’d kind of experienced music more as like a sort of high performance sport almost, and there was quite a sort of a distinct lack of community in the way that I experienced music. And I think I thought, okay, well, one of the things that I could go into to kind of maybe sort of change this or contribute to change in this is by going into education. So I wanted to go into teaching, and I wanted to kind of explore other ways of teaching and learning music that had more community at its sort of centre. But I couldn’t find any teacher training courses really when I graduated. So I was kind of really looking for something that kind of was in line with those ideas of music being sort of this kind of community, sort of centre for community. And I didn’t want to do a PGCE in secondary. I didn’t feel I was ready for that. I didn’t want to do anything like Suzuki, or I just I couldn’t really find anything that really spoke to me. But I knew I was not doing a great job at teaching, and that really bothered me as well. I think classical musicians, you know, they want to do everything perfectly, and so the fact that I wasn’t teaching perfectly as well was really getting to me. And I never found that course. So I decided okay, what’s the next best thing to learn? And I was like, I will look for an organisation that is delivering music education in a really interesting way, and that was Music Masters. And there was loads of group teaching going on. There was this really exciting team of teachers, and I thought, oh, I’ll see if I can work with them. So I joined as a co-ordinator, and then you know when they started to develop more of their teacher training work, I really threw my hat in the ring and was like, I know I was that teacher that didn’t that couldn’t find somewhere. So you know, please let me be involved with shaping this course, and so yes, now I am running the course, and it’s so incredibly personal to me because I was that teacher. Yeah.
AH: Oh, that’s an amazing story. That’s really lovely. And so, obviously, the course came about before you. Is that right? But can you kind of tell me about how the course came about? What was the gap that Music Masters were seeing in music teaching or teacher training that Musicians of Change is designed to close? You’ve kind of started talking about that, but tell me a little bit more about that.
KD: Yeah, we were just meeting so many musicians who were just feeling like they hadn’t had enough dedicated teacher training, and you know maybe they’d experienced the odd like one-off day, but nothing really dedicated and substantial. And they yeah they didn’t like feeling kind of underqualified. A lot of them were feeling really isolated, just you know, coming in and out of schools on their own, not feeling like they had a kind of community that they could talk to about issues that were coming up.
AH: Are you talking specifically about whole class teachers, or are you talking about both whole class and one-to-one teachers?
KD: I mean, a bit of both for sure, but I think, particularly with whole class teaching, where there wasn’t much training available for musicians to work in that way, the sort of feeling of overwhelm and being ill-equipped was really heightened. And actually, that often led to people just giving up altogether. And we know that this is a huge issue in music education at the moment. People leaving teaching. So yeah, so Musicians of Change was really designed to kind of yeah close that gap and address those issues that we found musicians were really facing.
AH: And has that picture sort of changed much? Is it changing much? Are you the only people kind of addressing it in the way you’re addressing it?
KD: I think there are definitely more training courses out there, and I think a lot of organisations and music services are doing great in-house training for sure, which is really helping. But I still think that there is an issue with musicians not feeling equipped, feeling overwhelmed, feeling quite burnt out, and actually, the course is now playing much more of a role in supporting musicians’ wellbeing in as much as it is with upskilling them. So it’s actually been really amazing to see that you know in our last five-year report, 88% of grads reported feeling less isolated, because of doing the course and connecting to a broader community of educators. So we know that there’s a really important role for things like training and courses to play in wellbeing for musicians.
AH: And I guess your courses are different from music hub courses in that music hub courses possibly are for people who are already employed by the music services or music hubs, and then they get the training. But your course is open to anybody, isn’t it?
KD: Yeah, exactly. So if you’re an individual and you’re not connected to, yeah a music service, you can apply for this course. But also just you know, just in the sense that actually you might find if you’re going to a sort of one-off training day put on by your service that you went to one that was similar to that a few years ago, and actually you’re at a different level to other people. So doing something that’s more dedicated and more in-depth, like a year-long training programme, you can really make it tailor your needs and where you’re at in your experience. And I think that’s the thing that sometimes those one-off training days just can’t cater for everybody in the same way.
AH: That’s really interesting. I was going to go on to ask you about the change aspect of that, but as we’re on this about the structure, I’ll ask you for anyone unfamiliar with the course, what does it actually involve?
KD: Yeah, so it’s a year-long course, and a lot of it is delivered in person and online, it’s actually roughly half and half. So there’s around 13 in-person teaching days that the students attend across the year, and they’re usually one day on a weekend, or we have a three-day induction week at the end of August at BCU, where everybody can kind of get to know each other, and yeah.
AH: I just always assumed it was in London, so that’s useful to know.
KD: Yeah, and actually we try really hard to make sure that the in-person days are in locations that, depending on where the cohort are based, it feels fair for people to get to. So, like for example, this year we’ve got lots of people doing the course from Scotland, so it’s very likely that we’ll have some in-person days in Scotland, just to make sure that it it feels it feels fair and accessible to everyone.
AH: So the commitment is 13 days actual training face-to-face with presumably lots of coursework. How much work is that? How much kind of commitment is that? Would you say?
KD: Yeah, there’s four pieces of coursework, and they’re really designed to sort of capture your day-to-day teaching. So you’re encouraged to capture your lesson plans, your reflections, the observations that you go out and do of others’ teaching. You can come into our flagship schools and observe any teaching that you like in those schools, and talk to those teachers. And you know, I think that’s a really unique thing that this course offers is that kind of access to a live on-the-ground day-to-day working programme. And then of course you have your one-to-one mentor who comes and sees you in your teaching setting and observes you three times across the year as well.
AH: Sounds like a great model, and it’s quite low cost, isn’t it? I think I was going to go onto cost later, but I think is it £1,500? Is that right? Subsidised price?
KD: Yeah, it’s £1,500 for the subsidised fee. So if you qualify for the subsidised fee, it’s because you’re teaching in state schools and you are perhaps able to apply for other bursaries on top of this as well. If you’re working in a particularly underserved area or postcode, and we have fully-funded places for Black and global majority educators and disabled educators as well. So, yeah, lots of financial support available.
AH: Excellent. It seems really accessible in terms of that could easily fit within somebody’s full-time working life, couldn’t it? Those days that work outside those days, yeah. Okay, it’s described as being for musicians committed to transforming music education, which is quite a statement. What do you mean by that?
KD: Yeah, I mean these are musicians that, for whatever reason, have a really deep appreciation for the role of music in society. Perhaps they’ve got an eye on inequality, and they have, or maybe they’ve struggled themselves in their musical journey, and they want to kind of make a change to future generations. There, I think they’re also the kind of people that aren’t that happy to just settle for kind of oh, it’s you know it’s somebody else’s problem to sort out. You know, it’s these are systemic issues, so we you know we can’t solve everything. I think these are people who really want to say, well, what can I do, even if it’s very small? And yeah, it’s something that we see kind of consistently through all the people that come on the course.
AH: Excellent, and do you kind of measure what change they’ve been making? Do you have any understanding of what sort of success looks like for a graduate, but also what success looks like for society as a result of Music Masters’ training?
KD: Yeah, I mean we do a lot of evaluation to kind of understand the personal journey that the student goes on throughout the course and beyond. So we get them to really kind of scale themselves and where they’re at with their confidence levels in things like inclusive practice or in leadership or in kind of how comfortable they are with like challenging and sort of speaking up to kind of create change. So we look at things like that, but then also we for select kind of case studies, we go out and see students in their actual teaching environments and talk to them and, perhaps the teachers at the school, the parents, the children themselves about how they’re finding working with that particular teacher. And some of those case studies have been really, really illuminating to see just actually what a year of training can do for someone in terms of their confidence and their initiative, and yeah, the impact they’ve managed to have on their community is really amazing.
AH: And do you, can you kind of give me some examples of the change they’re creating at all?
KD: Yeah, so that particular case study that I was kind of thinking of when I was talking about that is this amazing lady who works in North Wales. Who she was working mainly with children with special needs within a mainstream school, but then kind of started to establish herself as a sort of go to person because she was just changing so many things, trying out new things, and really having some great kind of just seeing some great engagement with her work. And she’s now inspired several of the TAs at that school to take up their own music making, joining a choir and learning an instrument, and also other sort of heads in that area have come to her and asked her to design curriculums for their schools to support those children. And she’s, I think, she’s one of the first teachers that’s been able to put a child who was struggling previously with their additional needs through GCSE music. So it’s actually amazing what you can do when you when you invest in a person like that who has that vision. They have everything there, but they just need the support behind them to say you can do this, there’s ways of doing this. And actually, this person’s done it too. So, you know, talk to them, or we’ll come and see you, or whatever it is, whatever support they need. It, you know, they can go on and do things like that in their community. It’s amazing.
AH: Yeah, that’s a brilliant story. And I, do you have a kind of network of alumni that who support each other afterwards?
KD: Yeah, we’ve got a growing graduate network, and we sort of put on lots of different events and kind of socials for them throughout the year, and we have a kind of core group that always turn up. We did a sound bath for them this year, just before half-term, which apparently is a great time to do a sound bath. It was yeah. It was, we were like we’re doing that again. And it’s yeah, it’s lovely to see the same faces, you know, stay in touch, turn up, and yeah, and then recommend the course to other people as well, and people in their organisation who are then, oh this has been really transformative for me. You should do it. So yeah, and a lot of them have even become mentors on the course as well.
AH: Oh, amazing! And do they tend to be music service teachers, or are they independent teachers, or are they people straight from uni? You know, what where do they tend to come from, and how do you know is do the hubs and music services pay for the course for some of them? So I’m interested in where they come from and who funds it.
KD: Yeah, it is a real mix, actually. We have a lot of independent people that come to us, and that’s you know that’s brilliant. And they often qualify for parts of the bursary and stuff, which gives them extra support. And then we have others who have really supportive employers who want to support them financially to do the course or free-up time for them to do it, and that’s really amazing. And we’ve been able to kind of have really positive relationships with them and support them to put more staff through the course. But yeah, and then we’ve had lots from just you know fresh out of undergrad who know they want to do teaching and come on the course and then get kind of taken under the wing of someone much kind of older or more experienced, and it’s really lovely to see those kind of like cross generational connections and yeah learning happening. It’s lovely.
AH: Yeah, it sounds like a great first step out of uni actually, because those sometimes you come out of uni thinking you do need a little bit more, and sometimes you just want to invest in some more training. But there isn’t anything similar to Music Masters around. It sounds as though it’s really addressing a gap. So it’s delivered with Birmingham City University’s Education & Social Work Department, not their music departments. That was interesting. So how did that partnership come about, and what did it bring to the course?
KD: Yeah, it’s a really great partnership. Their music education department is amazing. They’ve got Dr. Martin Fautley, they’ve got Dr. Gary Spruce, they’ve got all these kind of big names.
AH: Ah sorry, so it is kind of linked to that department.
KD: Yeah, but it’s funny because it does fall under their education programmes, and actually, so I mean, we have access to all that amazing research and that expertise, which is magical because it’s so progressive as well. Which you know is something that we wanted this course to really be. We wanted it to be really cutting edge. But I think the fact that you know it’s a PGCEI, right, it’s a postgraduate certificate in education. They run all PGCEs for all other kind of subjects there at BCU. It’s got a real focus on you know the professional skills to become a teacher, and that means that musicians doing this course, they feel like when they come out that they have the same training as that classroom teacher that they go and take the kids out of their lesson to teach. You know, they know what that person’s had, and they can speak the same language and share that same vocabulary. And I think that’s actually really valuable for musicians going into educational spaces.
AH: And does this course? So we kind of spoke about one-to-one and whole class at the beginning. Is this course suitable for, and will it give you the skills for both?
KD: Yeah, definitely. A lot of the kind of the pedagogical theory or the kind of approaches to things like behaviour and classroom management, it’s all applicable either way. And there’s such a focus on inclusive learning as well that, yeah, I would say that it’s you know particularly finding more and more that people actually are getting to teach more one-to-one if there’s particular needs in their class, as well as classrooms, they do have to do both. So yeah, definitely.
AH: Do both, great. And the course, how old is the course now? Is it sort of five years old, six years, something? Is it?
KD: Yeah, we just finished our sixth year. Yeah, so we’re going into our seventh year now, yeah.
AH: So it was piloted six years ago. Do you have any sense of what’s changed as it’s scaled up, as it’s become bigger, and how are you scaling it? So do you have any clear partnerships with any of the hubs? And of course, the hub structure has changed in the last couple of years, hasn’t it? As many, much fewer hubs as 40-odd hubs now. Yeah, do you kind of partner with them, with music teacher associations?
KD: Yeah, it’s changed a lot. When we started, we just ran the course for string teachers, and in London, and everything was in person, so it was very, very different. And then the sort of the pandemic kind of accelerated our move to being more national and running it online, and then hybrid. And through you know, and with actually with every instrument, sorry, as well, I forgot to mention opening up to other instruments. So yeah, so it went through a big sort of transformation, and we’re still learning all the time about how to make that work better for people and for it to be able to accommodate more people across the UK. And partnerships is a really big part of that. I think we have some great partners now, not just with music services who’ve put you know various staff members through it and continue to, so that we’re building a really nice sort of I guess hub of teachers that in that area, but also organisations like Young Sounds, we are a partner with them on their musical opportunities pilot, which means that anybody teaching on that pilot across the UK can access our course for free. So we’ve kind of looked at other organisations who work with music teachers and offered them various ways to do this course, whether it’s for free or with an extra subsidy and things like that.
AH: Excellent. So if someone is listening and is a musician or music educator who’s never really considered a further teaching qualification like this, what would you say to them?
KD: Oh, I would say do the course not just because you’re going to get really great skills and you know access to all these kind of amazing sessions and things. Because you’re going to meet great people, and you’re going to be supported by a really like warm and friendly team, and a graduate network is going to kind of welcome you with open arms. It’s such a strong, yeah, it’s such a strong community, and actually do it for the children that you teach as well, because you will just become a much happier teacher. I can guarantee you, and I think your children will really notice that actually, yeah.
AH: Oh, what a lovely message for people listening, and for hubs or music service leaders listening. What’s your kind of call to action for them?
KD: Yeah, I mean, I think even if you don’t think that your staff team need additional training, maybe you’re already providing something for them, or maybe you don’t think that they would be interested. I think show them that you care, show them that you value them. Give them this gift. It’s a year-long kind of gift of time and space for them to really kind of step into being the amazing educator that they can be. And you know, let Music Masters kind of be that dedicated team of people that can really support your team as well. You know, it’s really hard trying to do everything. Like hubs are under so much pressure, and actually, you know, there’s a team here that can really support your staff and return them to you, kind of happy and energised and ready to go. And I think you know that’s an amazing kind of resource to lean on, actually. So yeah.
AH: Excellent. That’s really positive way to end. And thank you ever so much, Katrina. It’s been fascinating to talk with you, and I wish you the best of luck with this year’s cohort and with all you’re doing at Music Masters.
KD: Oh, thank you.
AH: Thank you ever so much.